July was a tough month for Saudi Arabia. Here, we link to several articles which sum up the situation in the kingdom before Ramadan.
Amid recruitment bans, illegal maids increase wage demands.
No more domestic workers to Saudi from Philippines and Indonesia.
The present alternative plan is to fill t…
Archive for the ‘Gulf’ Category
Another troubling month passes in Saudi Arabia
August 6th, 2011
Sri Lanka aims to improve rights for women migrant workers abroad
August 6th, 2011
Death Gulf Housemaids Saudi Arabia Working conditions
“More attention is being given to the problems faced by the migrants,” she says. “Training for the foreign job seekers [has] been given by the Sri Lanka Foreign Employment Bureau, which is very important.” As hundreds of thousands of women leave Sri Lanka to work in foreign countries every y...
Demand for domestic help grows in Saudi Arabia
August 5th, 2011
The huge demand for domestic staff in Ramadan has resulted in shooting up wages of illegal housemaids up to 150 per cent, according to market sources. Normally Saudi families depend heavily on the domestic staff during Ramadan. There are several agents actively engaged in the illegal trade of supply...
World is a messy place …
August 4th, 2011
* This piece is a guest post from Junaid and presents his personal experiences in Saudi Arabia. * Abdul Rahman is a Bangladeshi national in his mid-forties. He sells Miswaak in front of my mosque. It is a very common practice here in Saudi Arabia, where labourers do several day jobs to earn decent ...
Indian Migrants Fall on Hard Times
August 3rd, 2011
Indian migrant workers in destinations such as the Middle East and Malaysia have fallen on such hard times that instead of sending money back home through the hawala (informal money transfer) system, many are receiving money from India, according to this story. This strange reversal is another indic...
Filipinos hired as fishermen in Saudi Arabia seek repatriation
July 28th, 2011
Ten overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were told to believe by a recruitment agent that they will work as fishermen only to find out, upon arrival to Saudi Arabia, there are no such jobs waiting for them, according to Migrante-Middle East, an alliance of Filipino migrants group providing assistance to...
Kuwaiti Government Official Rejects US Report on Human Trafficking
July 18th, 2011
Housemaids Kuwait Trafficking Working conditions
Kuwait has been rated many times as one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to combating human trafficking as seen in the US State Department annual reports, Human Rights Watch, and other international human rights organizations. On the 14th of July, Al-Qabas newspaper published statem...
Kuwait: Months-old baby in Jail
July 18th, 2011
Housemaids Kuwait Prisoners Women
A horrifying story was featured in the last page of the Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al-Qabas. The report said that a baby who is less than a year old is living in prison right now. The child is allegedly the result of “adultery” between an Indonesian housemaid and a Bengali man. The woman co...
ILO criticizes the status of domestic workers in Kuwait
July 18th, 2011
Abusive employers Housemaids Kuwait Rape Suicide Women
The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Qabas tried on the 18th of July to sum up in five lines the results of the International Labor organization meeting with Kuwaiti representatives discussing the status of workers in Kuwait. The ILO representatives said that Kuwait needs to work on protecting domestic workers ...
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